Power Storage

John and Anita use four Trojan L-16W batteries to store their electricity. This series/parallel battery pack stores 700 Ampere-hours of 12 VDC energy. This amounts to about 8,600 Watt-hours of storage. Once the batteries have been derated by 20% (if you don't know why, then see Home Power #1- Battery article), there is 6,900 Watt-hours of usable energy stored in the battery. At the rate that John and Anita consume power, this battery pack stores about 3.3 days worth of energy for them. The cost of their batteries was $880. With proper care we expect these batteries to last about 10 years. Details on proper battery cycling and care are in Home Power #1.

John & Anita located the batteries in their kitchen directly opposite their woodstove. While Anita is not happy about having them inside, she realizes the importance of keeping her batteries warm in the Winter. The preceding year, the Pryor's kept their batteries outside in the cold. They noticed the substantial decrease in the batteries capacity due to cold temperatures.

You can now recondition your old batteries at home and bring them back to 100 percent of their working condition. This guide will enable you to revive All NiCd batteries regardless of brand and battery volt. It will give you the required information on how to re-energize and revive your NiCd batteries through the RVD process, charging method and charging guidelines.